Summary

Rethink the Way You Think In hindsight, every great idea seems obvious. But how can you be the person who comes up with those ideas? In this revised and expanded edition of his groundbreakingThinkertoys, creativity expert Michael Michalko reveals life-changing tools that will help you think like a genius. From the linear to the intuitive, this comprehensive handbook details ingenious creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Through fun and thought-provoking exercises, yours"ll learn how to create original ideas that will improve your personal life and your business life. Michalkors"s techniques show you how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different. With hundreds of hints, tricks, tips, tales, and puzzles,Thinkertoyswill open your mind to a world of innovative solutions to everyday and not-so-everyday problems.

Author Biography

Michael Michalko is one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world. As an officer in the U.S. Army, he organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and international academics in Frankfurt, Germany, to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods. His team applied these methods to various NATO military, political, and economic problems and produced a variety of breakthrough ideas and creative solutions to new and old problems. After leaving military service, he was contracted by the CIA to facilitate think tanks using his creative-thinking techniques. He specializes in providing creativity workshops, seminars, and think tanks for clients who range from individuals to Fortune 500 companies.

Preface to the New Edition

The Barking Cat (Introduction)

xvii

INITIATION

(40)

Original Spin

(8)

Mind Pumping

(11)

Challenges

(13)

Thinkertoys

(6)

PART ONE: LINEAR THINKERTOYS

(158)

Group A

False Faces (reversal)

(10)

Slice and Dice (attribute listing)

(7)

Cherry Split (fractionation)

(6)

Think Bubbles (mind mapping)

(6)

SCAMPER (questions)

(39)

Group B

Tug-of-War (force-field analysis)

111

(6)

Idea Box (morphological analysis)

117

(9)

Idea Grid (FCB grid)

126

(6)

Lotus Blossom (diagramming)

132

(5)

Phoenix (questions)

137

(7)

The Great Transpacific Airline and Storm Door Company (matrix)

144

(6)

Future Fruit (future scenarios)

150

(7)

Group C

Brutethink (random stimulation)

157

(13)

Hall of Fame (forced connection)

170

(9)

Circle of Opportunity (forced connection)

179

(5)

Ideatoons (pattern language)

184

(6)

Clever Trevor (talk to a stranger)

190

(9)

PART TWO: INTUITIVE THINKERTOYS

199

(94)

Chilling Out (relaxation)

203

(7)

Blue Roses (intuition)

210

(8)

The Three B's (incubation)

218

(5)

Rattlesnakes and Roses (analogies)

223

(16)

Stone Soup (fantasy questions)

239

(9)

True and False (janusian thinking)

248

(8)

Dreamscape (dreams)

256

(5)

Da Vinci's Technique (drawing)

261

(7)

Dali's Technique (hypnogogic imagery)

268

(5)

Not Kansas (imagery)

273

(8)

The Shadow (psychosynthesis)

281

(6)

The Book of the Dead (hieroglyphics)

287

(6)

PART THREE: THE SPIRIT OF KOINONIA

293

(70)

Warming Up

299

(12)

Brainstorming

311

(12)

Orthodox Brainstorming

323

(18)

Raw Creativity

341

(22)

PART FOUR: ENDTOYS

363

(18)

Murder Board

365

(9)

You Are Not a Field of Grass

374

(7)

Index

381

(14)

About the Author

395

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

Introduction
THE BARKING CAT

What would you think of someone who said, “I would like to have a cat, provided it barked”? The common desire to be creative, provided it’s something that can be easily willed or wished, is precisely equivalent. The thinking techniques that lead to creativity are no less rigid than the biological principles that determine the characteristics of cats. Creativity is not an accident, not something that is genetically determined. It is not a result of some easily learned magic trick or secret, but a consequence of your intention

to be creative and your determination to learn and use creative-thinking strategies.

The illustration below shows the word “FLOP,” which we all know and understand. Look at it again. Can you see anything else?

Once we see the word “FLOP,” we tend to exclude all other possibilities, despite the strange shapes of the letters. Yet if you look at the “O” in flop, you can see a white “I.” Now if you read the white outlines as letters with the “I,” you will see the word “FLIP.” Flip-flop is the complete message. Once found, it seems so obvious that you wonder why you were, at first, blind to it.

By changing your perspective, you expand your possibilities until you see something that you were unable to see before. This is what you will experience when you use Thinkertoys. You will find yourself looking at the same information everyone else is looking at yet seeing something different. This new and different way of seeing things will lead you to new ideas and unique insights.

Thinkertoys train you how to get ideas. They are specific hands-on techniques that enable you to come up with big or small ideas; ideas that make money, solve problems, beat the competition, and further your career; ideas for new products and new ways of doing things.

The techniques were selected for their practicality and range from the classic to the most modern. They are divided into linear techniques, which allow you to manipulate information in ways that will generate new ideas, and intuitive techniques, which show you how to find ideas by using your intuition and imagination.

A popular children’s puzzle shows six fishermen whose lines are tangled together to form a sort of maze. One of the lines has caught a fish; the problem is to find which fisherman it belongs to. You are supposed to do this by following each line through the maze, which may take up to six tries, depending on your luck. It is obviously easier to start at the other end and trace the line from the fish to the fisherman, as you have only one possible starting place, not six.

This is how I researched and developed Thinkertoys. Instead of presenting a catalog of all known creative techniques and abandoning you to

puzzle out which ones actually work, I started with theideas(fish) and worked backwards to each creator (fisherman). Then I identified the technique that caught the idea.

Some readers will feel that they profit more from the linear techniques and will discount the intuitive ones. Others will prefer the intuitive and discount the linear. You can produce ideas using both the linear and intuitive techniques, and should not limit yourself to one or the other--the more ideas you generate the better.

This book will change how you perceive your own creativity, while stripping creativity itself of its mystique. You will, perhaps for the first time, see endless possibilities stretching before you. You will learn how to:

•     Generate ideas at will.

•     Find new ways to make money.

•     Create new business opportunities.

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Excerpted from Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques by Michael Michalko
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.